Saturday, January 21, 2012

-- Call for ethical debate over possible use of new technology in interrogation

A team of world-leading neuroscientists has developed a powerful technique that allows them to look deep inside a person's brain and read their intentions before they act….

The research builds on a series of recent studies in which brain imaging has been used to identify tell-tale activity linked to lying, violent behaviour and racial prejudice.

The latest work reveals the dramatic pace at which neuroscience is progressing, prompting the researchers to call for an urgent debate into the ethical issues surrounding future uses for the technology. If brain-reading can be refined, it could quickly be adopted to assist interrogations of criminals and terrorists, and even usher in a "Minority Report" era (as portrayed in the Steven Spielberg science fiction film of that name), where judgments are handed down before the law is broken on the strength of an incriminating brain scan….

"These techniques are emerging and we need an ethical debate about the implications, so that one day we're not surprised and overwhelmed and caught on the wrong foot by what they can do. These things are going to come to us in the next few years and we should really be prepared," Professor Haynes told the Guardian.

Barbara Sahakian, a professor of neuro-psychology at Cambridge University, said the rapid advances in neuroscience had forced scientists in the field to set up their own neuroethics society late last year to consider the ramifications of their research, “…we're moving ahead so rapidly, it's not going to be that long before we will be able to tell whether someone's making up a story, or whether someone intended to do a crime with a certain degree of certainty."

Professor Colin Blakemore, a neuroscientist and director of the Medical Research Council, said: "…what you can be absolutely sure of is that these (techniques) will continue to roll out and we will have more and more ability to probe people's intentions, minds, background thoughts, hopes and emotions…but we need to be thinking the ethical issues through.”

…The technology could also drive advances in brain-controlled computers and machinery to boost the quality of life for disabled people. Being able to read thoughts as they arise in a person's mind could lead to computers that allow people to operate email and the internet using thought alone, and write with word processors that can predict which word or sentence you want to type. The technology is also expected to lead to improvements in thought-controlled wheelchairs and artificial limbs that respond when a person imagines moving.

"You can imagine how tedious it is if you want to write a letter by using a cursor to pick out letters on a screen," said Prof Haynes. "It would be much better if you thought, 'I want to reply to this email', or, 'I'm thinking this word', and the computer can read that and understand what you want to do."

·FAQ: Mind reading

What have the scientists developed?
They have devised a system that analyses brain activity to work out a person's intentions before they have acted on them. More advanced versions may be able to read complex thoughts and even pick them up before the person is conscious of them.

How does it work?
The computer learns unique patterns of brain activity or signatures that correspond to different thoughts. It then scans the brain to look for these signatures and predicts what the person is thinking.

How could it be used?
It is expected to drive advances in brain-controlled computers, leading to artificial limbs and machinery that respond to thoughts. More advanced versions could be used to help interrogate criminals and assess prisoners before they are released. Controversially, they may be able to spot people who plan to commit crimes before they break the law.

What is next?
The researchers are honing the technique to distinguish between passing thoughts and genuine intentions.

A Pentagon-funded program known as SERE, which stands for “Survival, Evasion, Resistance, and Escape” was created by the Air Force, at the end of the Korean War, to teach pilots and other personnel considered at high risk of being captured by enemy forces how to withstand and resist extreme forms of abuse. After the Vietnam War, the program was expanded to the Army and the Navy. Most details of the program’s curriculum are classified…

…after September 11th several psychologists versed in sere techniques began advising interrogators at Guantánamo Bay and elsewhere. Some of these psychologists essentially “tried to reverse-engineer” the sere program, as the affiliate put it. “They took good knowledge and used it in a bad way,” another of the sources said. Interrogators and bsct members at Guantánamo adopted coercive techniques similar to those employed in the sere program. Ideas intended to help Americans resist abuse spread to Americans who used them to perpetrate abuse. Jonathan Moreno, a bioethicist at the University of Virginia, is a scholar of state-sponsored experiments on humans. He says, “If you know how to help people who are stressed, then you also know how to stress people, in order to get them to talk.”

….James Mitchell worked for years as a SERE administrator…According to a counter-terrorism expert familiar with the interrogation of the Al Qaeda suspect, Mitchell announced that the suspect needed to be subjected to rougher methods. The man should be treated like the dogs in a classic behavioral-psychology experiment, he said, referring to studies performed in the nineteen-sixties by Martin Seligman and other graduate students at the University of Pennsylvania. The dogs were placed in harnesses and given electric shocks that they could not avoid; they were then released into pens and shocked again, but this time they were given a chance to escape the punishment. Most of them, Seligman observed, passively accepted the shocks. They had lapsed into a condition that he called “learned helplessness.” The suspect’s resistance, Mitchell was apparently saying, could be overcome by inducing a similar sense of futility. (Seligman, now a psychology professor at Penn, has spoken at a SERE school about his dog research.)

Mitchell’s position was opposed by the counter-terrorism expert, who had not spent time at a SERE school. He reminded Mitchell that he was dealing with human beings, not dogs. According to the expert, Mitchell replied that the experiments were good science. The expert recalled making the argument that the U.S. should not “do things that our enemies do, like using torture.” When asked about this incident, Mitchell confirmed that he admired Seligman’s research.

At SERE, trainees in the Level C course are given the choice of seeing a Bible desecrated or revealing secrets to interrogators. “They are challenging your faith,” the SERE affiliate explained. “The Holy Book is torn up. They say they’ll stop if you talk. Sometimes they rip the Bible and throw it in the air.” The goal is to make detainees react emotionally to the desecration. Some trainees who are devout Christians become profoundly disturbed during the exercise.

On the blog, the graduate offered a detailed account of a SERE training exercise. (He confirmed the account’s details with me.) He wrote, “One of the most memorable parts of the camp experience was when one of the camp leaders trashed a Bible on the ground, kicking it around, etc. It was a crushing blow, even though this was just a school.”…

The graduate wrote that his experience with the “Bible trashing” took place “towards the end of the camp experience, which was 2-3 days of captivity…He brought out the Bible and started going off on it verbally—how it was worthless, we were forsaken by this God, etc. Then he threw it on the ground and kicked it around.

…..According to Falkoff’s (a lawyer defending several Guantánamo detainees) clients, a mass suicide attempt at Guantánamo, in August, 2003, in which two dozen or so detainees tried to hang or strangle themselves, was provoked by instances of Koran mistreatment—including one in which the text was allegedly wrapped inside an Israeli flag and stomped on.

Although the sere affiliate said that many of the program’s officials were careful and dedicated people, he said that “some of the folks” associated with the program seemed to enjoy using manipulative techniques. “They’d play these very aggressive roles, week after week,” he said. “It can be very seductive.” Although there is no scientific basis for believing that coercive interrogation methods work better than less aggressive ones, the affiliate said that some of the serepsychologists he knew believed that to get someone to talk “you have to hurt that person.”

Retired Army Colonel Patrick Lang… had attended a sere school as part of Special Forces training, and had found the experience disconcerting: “Once, I was on the other side of the exercise, acting as captor and interrogator,” he said. “If you did too much of that stuff, you could really get to like it. You can manipulate people. And most people like power. I’ve seen some of these doctors and psychologists and psychiatrists who really think they know how to do this. But it’s very easy to go too far”….

….Another sere technique that has apparently surfaced at Guantánamo is the use of “noise stress.” The sere affiliate told me that trainees often think that the interrogation portion of the program will be the most gruelling, but in fact for many trainees the worst moment is when they are made to listen to taped loops of cacophonous sounds. One of the most stress-inducing tapes is a recording of babies crying inconsolably. Another is a Yoko Ono album. Detainees at Guantánamo have reportedly been subjected to blaring audiotapes of loud music, cats meowing, and human infants wailing.….Banks (a Ph.D. in psychology from the University of Southern Mississippi) replied, “I’m not saying people don’t do some stupid things sometimes. Some people who received sere training may have sometimes done things they shouldn’t because they misunderstood what the training was about. I’m not going to tell you it didn’t happen. I can’t say that someone didn’t say, ‘Hey, let’s try waterboarding’ because they’d seen it at sere.” In fact, the problem was pervasive enough so that, last year, Banks introduced a new requirement at sere: graduates must sign a statement promising not to apply the program’s counter-resistance methods to U.S.-held detainees. “We did this when we learned people were flipping it,” he said.

Mayer, Jane. "The Experiment -- The Military Trains People to Withstand Interrogation. Are Those Methods Being Misused At Guantanamo?" New Yorker, July 11, 2005, 60.

vered to discredit the legitimate use of force by those who have no other

way to resist genocide and fight for freedom. It has colluded with the

major media and the academic establishment to cover up official vio-

lence and provocation while promoting exaggerated and fabricated

accounts which smear movement militancy as "terrorism.'' This propa-

ganda sets up dissidents for blatant repression and isolates them from

the support they need to withstand it.

［政略目的に暴力を行なう米警察こそテロリストといえる］

…Taking into account the political beatings, shootings, and vandalism

by the FBI and police, their aid to right-wing vigilantes, their provocation

and incite- ment of brutal assaults on activists, and their outright ssassination

of movement leaders, these government agencies are far and away

the primary source of political violence in the United States. It is they who

systematically and aggressively initiate the use of force and intimidation

for political ends. Under the guise of combatting terrorism, the FBI and

police are — in this fundamental sense — the real terrorists.

The government's secret use of force and fraud to crush political

opposition is antithetical to any accepted concept of democracy. In the

name of protecting our fundamental freedoms, the FBI and police have

in fact subverted them.

WAR AT HOME

［各国の秘密警察は米政府からその手口の指導や資金援助を受けている］

Most people in the United States rightly condemn the secret police

(often trained and financed by our government) who terrorize dissident

movements in many other countries. Applying the same standards to the

FBI and its allies in and out of government, it is hard to escape the

conclusion that the situation is not all that different here at home,

especially for people of color. The FBI and its associates together

perform all the classic functions of a secret police… They interro-

gated, detained, slandered, lied, vandalized, tortured, maimed, and

killed. What would they do if millions of people demanded basic change?

［権力犯罪を行なう米警察こそが民主主義と国家の法治を脅かしている］

In the United States today, it is the political police, not the radical activists,

who pose the threat to democracy and the danger to law and order (69).

FBI records reveal repeated maneuvers to generate pressure on dissidents from their parents, children, spouses, landlords, employers,college administrators, church superiors, welfare agencies, credit bureaus, and the like... They may try to threaten or intimidate you bypretending to have information about you: We know what you have been doing, but if you cooperate it will be all right.